Justice Committee on Nov. 20th, 2012

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Just at the close of your testimony you said that this legislation would have more than a symbolic value and that it would make a difference in the lives of people. You said that if you had more time you would elaborate on that, so I'm putting the question to you now.

[D. Ryan Dyck]

Sure. The best way I can explain that is with a very brief story.

During my tour across Canada interviewing LGB and trans people, I spoke with one young trans guy who was assaulted by three men in a bathroom at his university for using the men's bathroom. It was a quite horrifying story.

But after the interview I was speaking to him in the lobby, and he said, “There was one moment that changed my life.” I thought that perhaps the moment of being assaulted would be that moment, or that perhaps coming to an understanding of who he was and what his gender identity was might have been that moment. He said: “No, the most important moment in my life was in high school. I went to school one day, just like any other day, but something had changed.” When he walked into the school that day, he walked past the guidance counsellor's office, and where there had been nothing the day before, there was a little rainbow sticker at the bottom of the window.

It was the first moment in his life where he realized that somebody else in the world was thinking about him, that he was not alone, and that he could give up or let go of some that feeling of isolation. When we look at the horrifying rates of suicidality among our trans communities, that's not symbolic. To have that moment of having that isolation taken away from you, to have that moment of realizing that there are other people out there who care about you and who recognize you, that is not symbolic. That has a real impact on the lives of people.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Thank you.

Mr. Goguen.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for testifying and sharing your anecdotes with us. Certainly for the most part they are pretty horrific and certainly unpleasant, to say the least.

I'll share my point of view with you. This is an attempt to amend the Human Rights Act and also the Criminal Code. In my view, in the cases I've reviewed—there are ten of them, one of them from the court of appeal—they all indicate that basically the protection is already afforded to transgender people under both the human rights code and the Criminal Code.

I know Mr. Dyck said that he did some research and found no cases where section 718 of the code was invoked.

Of course, you conceded that it is difficult to prove a negative.

Having in mind that the protection, I believe, is already afforded under these two pieces of legislation, in my mind there is nothing, in changing and enacting this, that will stop transgender people from actually being abused. Wouldn't it be preferable to put efforts toward I guess educating the public? Or is there too much stigma attached to the situation of transgender to perhaps prevent such a type of promotional...or enlightening the public to the needs of your group?

I'd open that to the panel.

[Hershel Russell]

That's what I do for a living. Off time, that's what I do for a living, mostly to health care professionals but also in educational institutions, government bureaucracies, etc.

So no, the process of education is under way. There's lots more to do. Thank you: it's very important.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Ms. Apsit.

[Erin Apsit]

Actually, I believe it's very important to have explicit protections for trans people under the heading of gender identity. For example, in the Criminal Code, I do believe it does have some deterrent effect; right now it would be a far cry to find anyone who actually thought that committing hate crimes against trans people would fall under hate crimes provisions.

We heard earlier, I believe from Brent, the suggestion that we're covered under the heading of disability because of gender identity disorder. One of the problems with that is probably the overwhelming majority of people who have gender identities that vary from the norm.... The trans and gender-diverse people do not have such a diagnosis, so could not claim any kind of protection under the heading of disability.

So I don't believe they're covered without such explicit protection as gender identity being included in the bill.

[D. Ryan Dyck]

I would certainly agree with both Hershel and Erin.

What I would add is that, in my opinion, hate crime in particular is in part a result of us as a society believing, or not challenging, the notion that some people are less human than others, or less worthy of protection than others. It becomes very difficult for us, who are the public educators, to counter that notion, or to stop it from growing. If we cannot point to legislation, if we cannot point to our government and say that our government has stated clearly that trans people are equal....

So including these terms explicitly in the Canadian Human Rights Act and within the Criminal Code enables us to do that. Yes, education is important, but without the backing from legislation, there's only so much potency to that.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

But surely you'd agree that it's not a few words that will stop the abuse. Wouldn't the training of the prosecutors, wouldn't the training of the enforcement people, to sensitize these people to your group's predicament, be helpful? I mean, all the words in any act are not going to stop the abuse you're being subjected to.

Is there a more effective way? I guess that is what I'm asking.

[D. Ryan Dyck]

Absolutely more training, along with all of those things that you just said, are important. Absolutely they would be effective. However, it's not a one-size-fits-all solution.

As I stated earlier, I think it's very difficult to make that argument, or to make it convincingly, if we cannot point to explicit reference in law. I would not underestimate the effect that explicit reference has in training of prosecutors and educators and law enforcement.

[Hershel Russell]

Could I just put in a word here?

I'm thinking of a number of clients recently who have come out at work and been very anxious about what was going to happen. They've taken the piece of paper from Ontario law around gender identity and gender expression and they've taken it in to human resources. Human resources has read it, and it has made a difference.

So we're not talking about taking it to court. We're talking about this piece of paper from the government that says you are not permitted to discriminate against me. It's very, very powerful in our hands.

[Robert Goguen, Conservative, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Thank you.

Mr. Côté.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming today.

As I was listening to your opening remarks, I was thinking of you, especially, Mr. Russell. I studied physics up to university and the most interesting anecdote I remember is that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, with respect to quantum physics, was the subject of a vote in the Solvay Congress of 1927. The great Albert Einstein was on the losing side.

When we're talking about how we represent and how we understand the world, it may not always be easy to decide from a physics perspective, and no doubt that is even truer for medicine and psychology, as you stated. One should expect certain interpretations, and certain established diagnoses, to evolve, would you agree?

[Hershel Russell]

Certainly diagnoses have changed a great deal over the years. I think it was Sara who pointed out that you were in the DSM with a disorder as someone gay, lesbian, or bisexual until 1973. Certainly every time the DSM has gone through a new version, there have been very intense debates, and very “political” debates, I will call them, about what the new DSM should and should not say. Certainly this time around, the hottest debates have been around transgender issues.

I would also like to point out that one of the reasons these debates are so intense in that environment, and perhaps also here, is because of the extraordinary growth in the numbers of transgender, transsexual people worldwide. We have a longitudinal study from Europe on trans people. I don't have the date of publication in my head right now, but the study went back to the 1990s and found that the number of people who are ready to identify as trans has doubled every five years since 1990. It has doubled every five years.

All the clinics that work with trans children, trans teens, and trans adults are reporting not just a doubling in the number of people coming to their clinics, but either a quadrupling or even a sextupling of the number of people coming in. The number that you will most often find, if you look at scholarly documents, is that we are one in 30,000. It's very easy to disprove that number. It's not hard to do; just look at StatsCan. You can disprove that number very easily.

A more recent study in Massachusetts suggests the number is more like one in 200. This is a lot of people. Another recent study in England suggests it's about 1.6% of the population.

The rights of even the smallest minority matter—we all deserve to be treated as human beings—but I do want you to understand that we are a much larger population than most people understand, and a very rapidly growing population.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

I would like to talk about something else. There have been many women in my life and there will probably be more. That's how things are; I find it irresistible. Several years ago, when I was working in a service station, I had some fun with one of my former partners. In fact, one Halloween, I borrowed clothing from her closet to dress up, with her agreement...

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Too much information.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

My worst memory, Mr. Chairman, is that of wearing nylons, which is torture. I never want to experience that again.

However, you spoke about perception. You told us how difficult it is to experience people's looks at times. Several years later, I learned a lesson. I would like to speak about my experience as a politician and what I have noticed when I speak with female colleagues in my caucus. Despite the progress that women have experienced, I would say that in general it is not as easy for them as it is for me, a heterosexual man. This is a fact, this is reality, even though there is legislation and a whole system to make sure that women are provided with the protection they need in order to be treated fairly. That is one of the reasons why I want this bill to be passed.

One could say that a majority of the population experiences problems in getting fair treatment. In the case of homosexuals — and even more so in the case of transsexual or transgendered individuals — it is even more difficult. They simply want to be full-fledged citizens. We're not talking about favoritism or anything like that.

I can tell you that I will do my job as a legislator and do my best to have provisions written into our legislation that guarantee that an important part of the population has access to the same services as the rest of the population. I think that this is what you have experienced. You have experienced the denial of certain services that everyone should have a right to, whether that be police services, health services or other services.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dave MacKenzie]

Mr. Seeback, go ahead.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

I want to thank all the witnesses today. It's been very educational for me to listen to the issues you've brought forward. This is something that I'm giving a great deal of thought to, and you've given me a lot of information today that's very helpful.

I want to talk about a couple of points raised.

Mr. Russell, it was you who raised a number of them. You told us some very personal stories, personally painful stories, and I want to thank you for sharing that. It's helpful for us when we hear those kinds of stories to try to understand what you've gone through.

You talked about when you were transitioning, the sense of fear you had whenever you would go to a bathroom. I can certainly understand that. Do you see this legislation having an effect or helping in those circumstances? I don't see how it can, but perhaps you can tell me how it might.

[Hershel Russell]

Again, I'm not much use on legal issues, but I can tell you a little bit.

While I was in the process of transitioning, I was taking an extra professional degree, and the bathroom issue was a big issue. Classes were three hours long. I can't last that long; I'm old. There weren't any non-gender-specific bathrooms anywhere, without walking outside the building and going around the corner to a restaurant.

This was a building with five floors. On every floor there was a men's bathroom and a women's bathroom. A group of us went to the university—this was the University of Toronto—and asked if we could have one floor where you could have, instead of a men's washroom and a women's washroom, two pieces of plastic that said “all-gender washroom”, one on each washroom. All of the other bathrooms on the other floors could stay exactly the same.

After enormous debate that went on and on, they decided that it was absolutely impossible.

If we'd had this kind of legislation where we could say, “Look, the Government of Canada says you're not allowed to discriminate, and the way these bathrooms work now discriminates against us in this really powerful way; look at this document”, I believe it would have made a difference. I do.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

So you think this legislation would help with the development of...my colleagues are saying federal jurisdiction, so I guess that would be that within federal jurisdiction buildings, you think this legislation would lead to the creation of...gender-neutral bathrooms? Is that kind of what you're saying?

[Hershel Russell]

That's a great term.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Brampton West, ON]

Okay.